When Shit! isn't Mierda!

I read a friend’s story today about language and life. The story was a hoot. And it brought up a really intriguing point. Is Mierda! ever really Shit!? Can one ever reach the point of feeling another language?

If you speak another language, you’ll know what I mean. You might get the lingo down: tell the offender off nicely (which is the wuss way and typically the one of most beginners to a language), tell him off creatively to earn you a smile (which is not so much telling him off), tell him off elegantly (which means, I’m better than you even when I tell you off I do it with style), tell him off vulgarly (which is the real test: if you can make the offender blush and walk away sheepishly you’ve mastered the language).

But if someone really pisses you off, it just has to be done in your first language. Or does it?

I love to shout out profanities in Italian, especially when I’m driving. “Stronzo” is shorter and more aggressive sounding than “asshole.” When I’m driving, I’m not really emotionally involved with the other dirtbag drivers on the road and they can’t hear me. “Figlio di puttana” is one of those Italian slurs that just doesn’t do it for me. I mean, compare the sound of it to “son of a bitch” and you’ll see why. Are there profanities in some languages that help you let off steam better than their equivalents in other languages?

Audience is another question. When fighting with my Italian boyfriend, he was a “stronzo.” But my Argentinean boyfriend was an “hijo de puta.” To me they mean the same thing. My choice was based on my audience. But I called one an asshole and the other a son of a bitch. And in English, these are quite different and neither mean what I really wanted to say: “mother fucker.” Did these boyfriends ever understand how mad I was? Did they think I was madder than I really was?

But when I’m so angry that I need to curse, I need to do it to feel better, it has to be done in English. Cursing in Italian is light for me. It’s a diversion, a little fun, a play with words. Cursing in Spanish means nothing to me. I feel no release of negativity. The therapeutic effects are lost entirely. In the end, Shit! will never be Mierda!

If I break my toe while I’m walking with a group of Argentines, you’d better believe my head will be saying Shit! while my mouth says Mierda! If you live in another country and everything around you is happening in another language, yet you continue to think, process, and, in essence, experience all of this in your native language, all of your emotions, that is, come to you in your native language, isn’t the rest of it just acting? Can people ever really know who you are if you call them an asshole when you mean to call them a mother fucker?

Borat and Mamma Mia

While home visiting the family in November, I took my mom to the movies. We got there too late for whatever film it was we had planned on seeing. So we just randomly picked another one. I picked it actually. I liked the poster.

Borat. That’s what I picked. From the poster, I thought it was going to be an interesting sort of international picture that my mom and I would talk about for days and days. I wasn’t completely wrong. We are still talking about Borat, but our conversations don’t look much like I’d thought they would.

I suppose the majority of the audience knew what they were in for. They were mostly in their twenties and prepared to laugh at offensive jokes.

Borat is offensive from the first scene. You know that kind of humor that makes you laugh, but you feel a little guilty about laughing so you hold it in. I did hold it in for a while. But soon I was laughing with all the tweny-year-olds, laughing so hard my legs flew up to my chest and my stomach got a workout. My mom was stone cold.

Watching a movie you find endlessly funny with someone who is looking around to see if she knows anyone there because she would “just die” if her friends saw her is pretty surreal. Sometimes it makes you laugh even harder. The absurdity of it all. Sharing Borat with my mother, who would have ever guessed?

A few minutes into it I was worried we might have to leave. To be honest, my mom was a good sport. She stayed for at least the first thirty minutes. We had to leave when the fat guy was running around naked and Borat fell face first into his balls. That was really just too much.

The Lives of Others

If you haven't seen this movie, you must. "The Lives of Others" is a film about moral integrity and justice. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who wrote and directed the film, achieves what films rarely do; he develops a plot that appears simple and allows the story itself to reveal the complexity of human emotions and morality.

Set in East Berlin in 1984, the story is of an agent of the Stasi named Gerd Wiesler, played by Ulrich Muhe, who has a knack for identifying the enemies of the State. Fulfilling his Orwellian function, Wiesler is sent to spy on (or enter) the life of a couple, a writer and an actress. His mission is to find evidence of a conspiracy even though there is no reason to suspect that there will be any evidence. Indeed it is because the suspects have neither said nor done anything suspicious that the Stasi suspects them.

As Wiesler, a broken man whose life is the Stasi and who truly believes that the work he does is for the good of the country, listens in on their conversations about art,music, books and humanity, he becomes engaged in their lives. It may even be their innocence and goodness that most intrigues him. He learns from them. He begins to care for them and to care about what happens to them. The news of a friend's suicide is the turning point for all three main characters. The writer, Georg Dreyman (played by Sebastian Kock) plays Beethoven's "Appassionata" and tells his girlfriend, Christa-Marie Sieland (played by Martina Gedeck), that Lenin once said if he were to continue listening to this music he would not finish the revolution. As Wiesler listens in, observing how they comfort one another in their grief over their lost friend, a tear rolls down his cheek. Can anyone who has heard this music really be a bad person? asks Georg.

This is what makes the film so wonderful. Good and bad are not black and white. And the topic--that of the government invading the lives of its citizens even without reason and for the purpose of finding or fabricating evidence of a conspiracy--is one that should send a warning to US audiences. The torture of prisoners, the brutal interrogation tactics, the wiretaps and cameras watching every step, the fact that the government decides who is an enemy with or without proof, the censorship of art and artists. For those who value freedom and believe that by relinquishing some freedoms we will remain free, this film shows just how dangerous it is to give too much power to the powerful and just what it means to lose one's freedom.

Alquilar un Marido

They have this thing here called Alquilar un Marido (rent a husband). The first time I saw the sign I thought they'd pretty much hit the nail on the head. I mean, husbands are expensive and mostly useful in short spurts. Renting one seemed like a good idea.

Then I learned that these are really handymen. If you ask me, they got the name wrong. I'll bet the majority of women who call needing a handyman already have a husband who isn't very handy.

I rented my first two husbands today. David and his son David came to fix my heater. They're friendly and funny and very handy. They cost a lot less than most husbands I know and the heater actually works. I won't be filing for divorce any time soon.

I love a good book

I've bought this book, The God of Small Things, so many times and given it away just as I start reading it because I end up talking to someone about how good it is, they get excited about it, so I give them my copy. Then I buy a new one and start all over again. I'm only on chapter 8, halfway through the book. I usually give my copy away right about now.

This time, it's the writing style that fascinates me most. The first time I started it, the political side was the intrigue. I had just moved to Egypt, and although I'd lived in developing countries before, in Egypt it was much clearer that the impact of the developed world was devastating. I could relate with that part of the story as I was living it for the first time in my life.

But this time it's really Arundhati Roy's writing style that I love. Her details are meticulous and humorous. They don't read like pages of adjectives before nouns placed to fulfill the requirements of a composition class. Every detail has a meaning--often a hidden and derisive meaning. The plot is developed through the descriptions that often come from the voices of children (who haven't yet been jaded). And, it's spot on. She's a master of "Show me, don't tell me."

When fiction explains reality better than non-fiction ever could, that to me is excellence. And when it still grabs your attention at 3 in the morning after you've been teaching Russian students to speak English all online and don't want to read another word in any language, that is just plain awesome.

Mendoza

As if having all that great wine wasn't enough, look at those mountains!

Music--Live Music

I went to see Diego el Cigala at the Gran Rex a few weeks ago. Bebo y Cigala's Lagrimas Negras is one of my favorite CDs. The combination of gypsy flamenco with Cuban rhythms seems so well suited.

Listening to music that moves me in my home (where I can dance around and drink a glass of wine) is one of my favorite pastimes. A live concert of that same music can sometimes be a real letdown. Not this one.

Diego el Cigala's passion was totally contagious and even though I couldn't get up and dance, we were in a theater after all, the vibrations of the music hit deep. I could feel the rhythms, not just hear them. When he began singing, the energy was intense.

He came back for at least 4 encores, ending the show with an improvisation that took me back to Sevilla. I once saw a group of teenagers along the Guadalquivir dancing, singing and playing the cajon as they passed around a bottle of booze. How I longed to be a Spanish teenager growing up in Andalusia.